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Tesla’s second-quarter earnings: the numbers you should know

There’s weren’t many big surprises in Tesla’s second quarter earnings on Thursday. The electric car company is on track to ramp up its Model S production, it’s hoping to get its Model X out the door by early 2015 (after previous delays), and it’s moving along with its battery factory plans.

The only change I noted in guidance was that Tesla said it plans to invest between $750 million and $950 million in 2014, which is an increase of $100 million from its prior guidance. Turns out building a huge battery factory, ramping up production of a current car and getting another out the door all at the same time is pretty expensive.

The reaction of the market to the earnings was flat — Tesla’s stock closed at $223.30 per share. Tesla said it generated $769.4 million in revenue for the second quarter, which was up substantially from the $405.1 million in revenue from the same quarter in 2013. But Tesla lost $61.9 million for the quarter, doubling the loss ($31 million) from the same quarter the year earlier.

Tesla Model S, image courtesy of Tesla.

Here’s the other numbers you should know from their earnings:

A 100,000 run rate by end of 2015: Tesla’s annualized delivery rate should exceed 100,000 units by the end of next year. In the earnings call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that this number will come from about 1,000 Model S and 1,000 Model X cars made per week by the end of 2015.

35,000 Model S cars delivered in 2014: Tesla said it’s on track to hit this number, with 8,763 Model S cars made (7,579 shipped) in the most recent quarter (up by 16 percent from the first quarter) and a plan to produce 7,800 Model S cars in the third quarter. The third quarter will have a slightly lower ramp as the newer more automated factory production comes online.

1,000 cars per week: Tesla is trying to ramp up Model S production to 1,000 per week. It’s currently making them at 800 cars per week. The retooling of the Fremont factory, which happened over the past week and a half, will bump them up to 1,000 eventually.

156th Supercharger: Tesla’s electric car charging network is now “the largest and the most rapidly growing fast charging network in the world,” it said.

Moar R&D: Tesla ramped up R&D spending considerably for the quarter as it starts to get its Model X finalized. Tesla said it spent $108 million on R&D in the second quarter. On the earnings call, Musk said cryptically that there’s things that outsiders don’t know about that it’s spending R&D on: “We’re not showing all of our cards,” said Musk.

On its way to 28 percent gross margin: Tesla should hit a 28 percent non-GAAP gross margin for its cars — excluding ZEV credits — by the end of the year, it said.

7 Responses to “Tesla’s second-quarter earnings: the numbers you should know”

Moar R&D! Nice to hear that the evil genius has more plans up his sleeves. Maybe a pure autonomous, Tesla-owned taxi service for select areas? Like Google’s autonomous shuttle but done with style. Personally, I’d hope that he’s also working on the “model III” version of the Model X. Dying to get into an electric but I need more volume and lower price.

Hmm, then perhaps working with city governments to convert all (regulated) taxi companies to buy Tesla EVs. The juice would be free via Superchargers. And the issue of range anxiety is eliminated for passengers. Plus it advances Tesla’s mission of every vehicles on the road being electric.